Taking a break from our Philadelphia street urchin, we delve into the world of assholes in the work place. It seemed appropriate to me at the moment. Perhaps it is something personal, or perhaps it is the revelations regarding the dysfunctional White House. In case you’ve been in a cave for the week, Bob Woodward, embarrassed by 6 years of Bush boot licking, returned to his roots of exposing the hubris of the powerful. Today’s Next To Heaven was build from a real U.S. civil defense film called “Our Cities Must Fight“Â. As you will see, the film contains a great example of the U.S. government telling the public a bald face lie relating to their safety. Seems familiar somehow.

I download movies from Archive.org. I watch the movies. I write and record new audio. I re-cut the video to the new audio. Every Wednesday there will be a new movie.

Today’s episode, our premiere, is part one of the sad saga of a man who has lost his youth and most everything else. He did have some fun along the way.

All the music for our first mini-series is by the very talented Matt Sargent.

To see the source footage click here. Here is how the source film is described on archive.org —

This film is essentially split in two, the first part is a exploration of the slums of Philadelphia, and the second is this weird kitchen sink drama of a mother and child living in it.
The Slums of Philadelphia part is really quite engrossing, as it’s really quite shocking to see such buildings in disrepair. It’s hard to believe this was shot in Philadelphia in 1948, where it looks like Europe in 1942.

The Kitchen sink part is a pretty wild, sloppily edited patchwork of a story featuring a woman and her young child. The film reminds me of, of all things, early Russian cinema (I am not REALLY too sure if this is intentional) lol. Actually, to be even MORE specific, the whole thing reminds me of early Guy Maddin…